Robby Hoffman

We just, like, were... My mother took over.

Everything was tight, and we were on welfare, and we could always feel the stress, the financial strain for my mother.

I mean, she talked about it openly, and even if she... There was no behind closed doors.

We lived in such close quarters that she's on the phone crying about this.

We're all... Can hear everything.

There's no, like, oh, you go to your room, you go to your room.

We're all sharing the same rooms.

So, you know, there's no...

Yeah, and then going, but I was exacerbated, and I've talked to this, so I don't have to delve too far, but going, my mother really prioritized education and thought it was a great opportunity that they would take me at the school, there's no question, and it was.

What school was it?

It was a Jewish private school.

In the neighborhood.

But it was, you know, a lot of my siblings went to the free schools in the public and they said they would take me and I could get this education.

But all the kids were rich there.

Rich Jews for the first time.

I hesitate to say gifted, but I was clever.

But how did you get, how did they pick you?

So when we moved to Canada, we moved in the middle of the year.

It was this big thing.

But my grandfather was taking us around to schools that would let us start and not lose half a year of school, basically, because then we would all have failed.